RAINBOW BIRD RENDEZVOUS & ALMONDS TO MILK

Last week 2 friends and I visited a vegetarian and organic café I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time. So impressed by the food and fresh tastes I’ve been back again to experience it on my own. I love healthy, different, lesser-processed, more natural foods and Rainbow Bird Rendezvous is one of the rare places in Tokyo you’ll find this. A 10 minute walk from Naka-Meguro Station, turn right, then right again up Naka-Meguro Shotegai Shopping Street between Natural Lawson and Naka-Meguro’s famous Mexican restaurant, Junkadelic. See here for Google’s Naka-Meguro Map.

From the Inside Looking Out

This café is interestingly partnered with a therapy salon…

Curious as to what might be behind closed off curtains, in the corner of the café, I peered through an opening to see massage tables and an abundance of organic oils. I guess it’s not a bad idea combining an organic food menu with therapeutic healing. Is it? It wasn’t until I looked more into the this tidy little café and therapy salon that I realised its unique focus on LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability). I believe it’s one of the first business’s in the area to take on an environmental, personal development and sustainable living approach to business and customer interest.

Finding healthy, organic products such as wheat flour, wheat pasta and agave nectar is particularly hard for a foreigner in Tokyo with little Japanese. Which is why this gem in Naka-Meguro is an exciting and unique find for the area. Although only a small number of organic food products are in stock, the staff seem happy to order requested items through their supplier.

What did I eat here? Feeling a little full from breakfast still I opted for the organic salad set which amounted to a perfect meal size for my less hungry stomach than usual.

And you might be asking what that brown something was next to the miso and broccoli. It was actually a quiet tasty bite size piece of lightly fried soy. The other girls had a nutritious, clean curry set with salad, miso, brown rice and the same brown soy fried pieces.

The celery, apple and almond milk smoothie (700 yen) sounded and tasted delicious leaving me wondering how I might remake a smoothie like this one at home. It lead me to ask a staff member about the almond milk they use. Friendly and very instructional, the staff told me about the joys of making almond milk from scratch.

As I researched this idea and noted some instructions, I grew more interested to take a shot at milking some almonds! All ingredients needed is a cup of raw almonds and 3 cups of filtered water.

Step 1: Soak the almond in the water overnight.

Step 2: Blend in a blender on medium until combined.

Note: The water must be changed for fresh, purified water. I made the mistake of reusing the same water from the soaked almonds which resulted in a bitter, slightly unpleasant taste. A little disappointed for my first trail and not a good way to set an example but I’ll definitely take it on as a learning experience for next time.

Here the milk is looking a bit green in the blender but it’s just the green lid reflecting off the light from the camera flash.

Almonds are not to be wasted on trial and error for making milk. But the beauty of this process is the almond milk by-product, almond meal! This is what is left once you have filtered the milk through a cheese cloth and squeezed out all the liquid. Mistake and learning experience number 2 is to be more careful when filtering the milk as almond grit was still throughout the milk once filtered. Perhaps I’ll use a coffee filter to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

A simple Google search on How to Make Almond Milk will give you various ways to make the milk. I like Oh Nuts Blog method and will be following the almond purée style first up.

So there you have it, a new organic, vegetarian café and therapy salon to try in Naka-Meguro and a vegetarian milk alternative.